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Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492)
}} Lorenzo de' Medici (January 1, 1449 – April 9, 1492) was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance. Known as Lorenzo the Magnificent (Lorenzo il Magnifico) by contemporary Florentines, he was a diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists and poets. His life coincided with the high point of the early Italian Renaissance; his death marked the end of the Golden Age of Florence. The fragile peace he helped maintain between the various Italian states collapsed with his death. Lorenzo de' Medici is buried in the Medici Chapel in Florence. Childhood Lorenzo's grandfather, Cosimo de' Medici, was the first member of the Medici family to combine running the Medici bank with leading the Republic. Cosimo, one of the wealthiest men in Europe, spent a very large portion of his fortune in government and philanthropy. He was a patron of the arts and funded public works. Lorenzo's father, Piero 'the Gouty' de' Medici, was also at the center of Florentine life, active as an art patron and collector. His mother Lucrezia Tornabuoni was a poet and writer of sonnets. She was also a friend to figures like Luigi Pulci and Agnolo Poliziano and became her son's advisor when he took over power. Lorenzo was considered the brightest of the five children, tutored by a diplomat, Gentile Becchi. He participated in jousting, hawking, hunting, and horse breeding for the palio, a horse race in Siena. His own horse was named Morello di Vento. Piero sent Lorenzo on many important diplomatic missions when he was still a youth. These included trips to Rome to meet with the pope and other important religious and political figures. Lorenzo, however, was a man whose only weakness was separating politics from the many young women who were interested in courting him. Renaissance ]] Lorenzo's court included artists such as Piero and Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Andrea del Verrocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Michelangelo Buonarroti who were involved in the 15th century Renaissance. Although he did not commission many works himself, he helped them secure commissions from other patrons. Michelangelo lived with Lorenzo and his family for five years, dining at the family table and attending meetings of the Neo-Platonic Academy. Lorenzo was an artist himself, writing poetry in his native Tuscan. In his poetry he celebrates life even while—particularly in his later works—acknowledging with melancholy the fragility and instability of the human condition. Love, feasts and light dominate his verse. Cosimo had started the collection of books which became the Medici Library (also called the Laurentian Library) and Lorenzo expanded it. Lorenzo's agents retrieved from the East large numbers of classical works, and he employed a large workshop to copy his books and disseminate their content across Europe. He supported the development of humanism through his circle of scholarly friends who studied Greek philosophers, and attempted to merge the ideas of Plato with Christianity; among this group were the philosophers Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Later years ]] During his tenure, several branches of the family bank collapsed because of bad loans, and, in later years, he got into financial difficulties and resorted to mis-appropriating trust and state funds. Toward the end of Lorenzo's life, Florence came under the spell of Savonarola, who believed Christians had strayed too far into Greco-Roman culture. Lorenzo played a role in bringing Savonarola to Florence. Lorenzo de' Medici died during the night of April 8/9, 1492, at the long-time family villa of Careggi (Florentine reckoning considers days to begin at sunset, so his death date is the 9th in that reckoning). Savonarola visited Lorenzo on his death bed. The rumor that Savonarola damned Lorenzo on his deathbed has been refuted by Roberto Ridolfi in his book, Vita di Girolamo Savonarola. Letters written by witnesses to Lorenzo's death report that he died a consoled man, on account of the blessing Savonarola gave him. As Lorenzo died, the tower of the church of Santa Reparata was allegedly struck by lightning. He and his brother Giuliano are buried in a chapel designed by Michelangelo, the New Sacristy; it is located adjacent to the north transept of the Church of San Lorenzo and is reached by passing through the main Cappella Medicea; the chapel is ornamented with famous sculptures, and some of the original working drawings of Michelangelo can still be distinguished on two of the walls of the Chapel and in the concealed corridor under the New Sacristy discovered only in 1976.[http://www.florentine-society.ru/Medici_Chapel_Mysteries.htm Peter Barenboim, Sergey Shiyan, Michelangelo: Mysteries of Medici Chapel, SLOVO, Moscow, 2006]. ISBN 5-85050-852-2 He died at the dawn of "The Age of Exploration"; Christopher Columbus would reach the "New World" only six months later. With his death, the center of the Italian Renaissance shifted from Florence to Rome, where it would remain for the next century and beyond. Marriage and children Lorenzo married Clarice Orsini by proxy on February 7, 1469. The marriage in person took place in Florence on June 4 of the same year. She was a daughter of Giacomo Orsini, Lord of Monterotondo and Bracciano by his wife and cousin Maddalena Orsini. They had nine children: * Lucrezia di Lorenzo de' Medici (August 4, 1470 - November, 1553). She married Giacomo Salviati. Their daughter Maria Salviati was mother to Cosimo I de' Medici. * Twins born in March, 1471. Died shortly after birth. * Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici (February 15, 1472 - December 28, 1503). * Maddalena de' Medici (July 25, 1473 - December, 1528). Married Franceschetto Cybo, an illegitimate son of Pope Innocent VIII. * Pope Leo X (born Giovanni de' Medici; December 11, 1475 - December 1, 1521). * Luisa Contessina Romola de' Medici (January 25, 1477 in Florence – summer 1488). She was betrothed to her cousin Giovanni de' Medici il Popolano. * Contessina Antonia Romola de' Medici (January 16, 1478 in Pistoia – June 29, 1515 in Rome). Married Piero Ridolfi. * Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Nemours (March 12, 1479 - March 17, 1516). Two of his sons later became powerful popes. His second son, Giovanni, became Pope Leo X, and his adopted son Giulio (who was the illegitimate son of his slain brother Giuliano) became Pope Clement VII. His first son and his political heir, Piero 'the Unfortunate', squandered his father's patrimony and brought down his father's dynasty in Florence. Another Medici, his brother Giovanni, restored it, but it was only made wholly secure again on the accession of a distant relative from a branch line of the family, Cosimo I de' Medici. In popular culture * In Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed II, the main character Ezio Auditore da Firenze helps Lorenzo survive the Pazzi attack at the Duomo, then after killing Francesco de' Pazzi (during an invasion of the Piazza della Signoria) he became Lorenzo's personal assassin, hunting down the surviving conspirators. Lorenzo would later offer him assassination contracts throughout the remainder of the game, but disappeared from the story after granting Ezio leave to investigate Venice and presenting him with a cape bearing the Medici coat of arms. * In The Simpsons episode, Weekend at Burnsie's, Mr Burns refers to Lorenzo de' Medici when Homer asks for extra cheese on his pizza pie. * In Kathleen McGowan's 2010 novel, "The Poet Prince", Lorenzo de' Medici is the main historical protagonist; alongside other famous Italian Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo, da Vinci and Botticelli and controversial friar, Girolamo Savonarola as the historical antagonist. * Londa Marks, created the "Medici Tarot" deck released in 2009 with focus on Lorenzo de' Medici and how mysticism played an important role in his life and possibly after his death. The tarot story line includes divinations for each card then shows Lorenzo's interests in hermeticism and why it took 560 years for a deck of tarot to be developed in the Medici name when Visconti Sforza tarot deck was created in 15th century. Some of the Medici family are shown on the cards including Lorenzo de' Medici, Cosimo de' Medici, Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, Lucrezia Tornabuoni and other Medici family figures, each playing a role in Lorenzo de' Medici's alchemy of the Medici Tarot. *Evelyn Waugh's novel "The Loved One" contains a character named Lorenzo Medici (pronounced "Medissy," because otherwise Medici "kinda sounds like a wop") who usurps the job of a character who subsequently commits suicide. See also * Medici * Medici giraffe * Lorenzo de' Medici Timeline * Medici Chapel Further reading * Miles J. Unger, Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de Medici (Simon and Schuster 2008) is a vividly colorful new biography of this true "renaissance man", the uncrowned ruler of Florence during its golden age. * Christopher Hibbert, The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall (Morrow-Quill, 1980) is a highly readable, non-scholarly general history of the family, and covers Lorenzo's life in some detail. * F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de- Medici and the Art of Magnificence (The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) A summary of 40 years of research with a specific theme of Il Magnifico's relationship with the visual arts. * Peter Barenboim, Michelangelo Drawings - Key to the Medici Chapel Interpretation ( Moscow, Letny Sad, 2006) ISBN 5-98856-016-4, is a new interpretation of Lorenzo the Magnificent' image in the Medici Chapel. Historical novels * Linda Proud, A Tabernacle for the Sun (Godstow Press, 2005), a literary novel set in Florence during the Pazzi Conspiracy adheres closely to known facts. * Linda Proud, Pallas and the Centaur (Godstow Press, 2004), deals with the aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy and Lorenzo de' Medici's strained relations with his wife and with Poliziano. * Linda Proud, The Rebirth of Venus (Godstow Press, 2008), the final volume of The Botticelli Trilogy, covers the 1490s and the death of Lorenzo. References External links __SHOWFACTBOX__ Category:15th-century Italian people Lorenzo I Category:Rulers of Florence